My podcast theme today is to share some cross-cultural stories I consider very classic.....by the term 'classic' I mean I keep repeating it until I feel embarrassed as some may have heard them a few times ka. In any case, I continue telling the stories:))!
I shared three stories but the short one is about 'How are you?' shared by one American grantee who ran to help his student who was injured from playing on the sports day. The response to his 'How are you?' was 'Fine, thank you!'....so automatic that it sounded like a parrot speaking English ka.
When thinking about it further, besides our way to learn English by rote, it's also our own 'feeling grengjai' not for others to feel too worried about us too na ka.
Khon Thai narak ka.
This made me think of a panel I joined in yesterday on 'Innovation of Educational Administration in the Transformation Era', organized by the National Institute for the Development of Teachers, Faculty Staff, Educational Personnel, Ministry of Education. I was fascinated by the huge area and facilities for training and have seen many opportunities for such space and investment ka.
I was really impressed with Dr. Wiriyah Ruechaipanit, a panelist who created 'Eduzones'.....my first time to get to know him. He's critical about Thai education and there're quite a few points I wish I could have had more time to talk with him ka. He said whatever he said that got a lot of negative comments, it meant he was successful in doing so. His example was when he wrote about the rights of students to wear their hair longer as it was about their heads. It turned out he was bombarded by a good number of school administrators....some said Dr. Wiriyah isn't even a teacher and how he could know about schools, etc. I thought of a Nobel Prize Laureate who told us to be ready to be disliked when we do something important and different.
Dr. Wiriyah also said our educational system blocked kids' creativity as administrators and teachers are so used to staying on rules and regulations. We all hear about it often, can't agree more....yet, I think actions to lessen the degree of our education community to be in the rule game aren't that obvious, nor powerful. Quietly, I was happy that our universities have more autonomy and freedom than schools though again, some tend to play by the rules out of their habitual practices.
What I've got out of this panel was that the three panelists (me included) shared the same ideas ka:
- Khon Thai narak mak with lots to share and impress others so we need to know our own strengths and optimize them.
- When talking about innovation, it's about each and every school administrator to know themselves in order to know how best to become more creative and innovative while learning how to interact and encourage others to be so as well.
- Diversity and inclusion are still the keys to ignite more ideas and creativity that have to be linked with the change of mindsets to look beyond one's own specialization and sectors.
- As usual, I emphasized several things ka....looked into our own cultural traditions to see what to rid or lessen. The administrators have to be models taking up some universal standards especially issues related to plagiarism and harassment ka.
- Another reminder was that 'Innovation and transformation' must be taken up seriously as appropriate, not because it's been in the trend and they thought it was a must to follow!
I left the conference feeling that even though MOE has tried coming up with advance thinking and guidelines, it has had huge gaps in terms of forward looking, thinking, deployment, and communication as it's still held so tight to cultural traditions it must eradicate ka.
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